Nothing is What it Seems
by alegriavida
Summary: Sarah will learn all over again that nothing is what it seems in the Labyrinth
1. Chapter 1

Everything seemed so surreal in the hours after Sarah got home.

She didn't remember much about the party. She was just so relieved that everything was back as it should be. When everyone went back throughout the mirror, she was finally left alone with her thoughts. And oh, what strange thoughts they were. She kept running everything through her mind over and over; the wish, her new friends, the labyrinth…him.

Sarah didn't want to think about him, but she couldn't keep him from imprinting himself in her mind. She opened her window and leaned on the sill, letting the night breeze hit her face.

Jareth, the Goblin King, was the villain in her story; the bad guy. Wasn't he? He had tried so hard to make her fail, including almost killing her with…what had called them…the cleaners? If that door hadn't opened right then, she would have died. But…maybe he was behind that. He seemed to be in control of things in his Labyrinth. Maybe he had made it look like he was the villain, because that was how she'd seen him. "You cowered before me, I was frightening." Sarah had read enough faerie-tales to know that more often than not, Fae granted wishes but not in any way you would expect. They were tricksters. Maybe he really HAD just been giving her what she expected of him.

She kept repeating his last offer silently to herself. She hadn't really processed what he was saying at the time; she'd been too preoccupied with her task, with being the hero and doing the right thing. And she HAD done the right thing. She had saved her baby brother. But now she thought back to his words.

"Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave." It sounded ridiculous at first, but when she really thought about it, she realized it wasn't very far from something she'd heard people vow to each other many times. A mutual promise to love, cherish and obey. Was that what he meant? She was only 15! But…maybe age didn't mean the same thing to creatures like him. After all, younger girls than her were getting married in the human world for thousands of years in the past. And judging from his castle…and his clothing, the culture in the Underground was more like Aboveground's middle ages than anything else. But still…she wasn't ready for marriage. She didn't even really know Jareth. God, she hadn't even finished high school!

Sarah shook her head to clear her thoughts. This was ridiculous. She would probably never see him again. She didn't even know if any of it was real. She thought it was, but now that she was back at home and there was no sign of magic anywhere, she wasn't sure. Was it all just an elaborate dream that her over-active mind had made up? Maybe, but then why was she so exhausted?

She needed to get some rest or she would drive herself insane thinking all night. She got into bed and climbed under the covers, wrapping them tightly around her for comfort. She thought she would have to struggle to find sleep, but she was wrong. Sleep found her just moments after she settled in and closed her eyes.

If she had known the truth, she would never have been able to get to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarah realized something was wrong as soon as her sleep began to fade away. Rather than her comfortable soft bed, she felt something hard and oddly shaped beneath her, and the air smelled like a mixture of rotting meat and musty attic. She couldn't hear a thing, but when she felt a gentle breeze flutter over her, she opened her eyes. She woke up in the junkyard. She was back in the labyrinth. With wide eyes, Sarah looked around her. No! This wasn't happening! How could she be back here? She had already solved the labyrinth! She started to panic as she tried to climb off the pile of forgotten relics she was lying on but realized something wasn't right; something besides the fact that she just woke up in a place she never wanted to see again.

She realized with horror that she wasn't just lying on a pile of junk. She was attached to it…no. It was part of her. She scraped at a small doll on her arm, trying to get it to come off, but the fabric of the toy was fused with her skin. Bile rose in her throat, and her heart raced as she tried to keep the growing panic at bay. She screamed as she finally ripped the doll off of her arm like a bandaid and her skin came away with it, leaving a bloody red gash.

Sarah began to cry. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she tried to move off the pile to no avail.

"Help! Please, someone help me!"

But no one came to her rescue. No Hoggle came running. No Sir Didymus rode up on his trusty steed, and no Ludo called on his rocks to help. Even the old woman who carried her possessions on her back would have been a welcome sight, but Sarah was alone. She was alone and terrified, because she was going to have to get out of this on her own. She had to calm down.

"That's enough crying, Sarah," She said out loud, sniffling as she tried to put an end to her sobbing.

Surely there was a way out of this; there had always been a way out of things before. She looked around her, trying to find some way to get away from this mess. There was so much junk attached to her, but she thought if she could at least turn over partly, she could stand.

She tried to twist around and pull herself over. It hurt. It felt like her limbs were being pulled from her body, and she wanted to give up and lie in a heap until someone finally found her. But she couldn't give up. She screamed once again with the effort of turning herself over, but it worked. The junk attached to her body came with her, and bore down on her back, but with a tremendous effort, she was finally able to stand.

She knew she wouldn't be able to go far with all the things holding her down, but she had to get out of this place. The castle wasn't far. She could make it. She had to. Maybe Jareth would take pity on her and stop the pain.

With all her strength, she began to walk. All the junk-the books, dolls, toys, and games-hung off of her, weighing on her shoulders like an oversized rucksack filled with bricks. Sarah moved slowly along the gray dirty path between piles of broken and forgotten things. The heavy pile of junk bore down on her so that she could barely walk. Sarah had to force herself to put one foot in front of the other, but she was making it. She was making some sort of progress…until she fell. Something in the path caused her to trip, and she came tumbling down with all the junk falling on top of her back. She lay in the dirt for a while, unable to build up the energy to move. When she finally talked herself into trying again, it was a tremendous effort just to lift herself onto her knees. But Sarah wasn't one to give up. She hadn't given up on Toby, and she wouldn't give up on herself. She pushed herself onto her feet and began to walk again.

She fell to her knees several times again, unable to continue holding the weight, but she found she could lean against the other piles of junk and still get up after a few minutes. Eventually she made it to the end of the junkyard.

Sweat poured down her face, and she could barely breathe, but she could see the goblin city up ahead. She smiled with relief and began to walk again…until her way was barred. A tall creature, something far more sinister than the goblins and creatures she'd seen in the labyrinth so far, stepped from behind a gnarled tree. She gasped and tried to back away but tripped over her own feet and fell back onto the ground.

"You may not leave. The King is not ready for you yet," The creature's spoke with a low guttural voice that frightened Sarah even more.

It must have been at least six feet tall and wore a cloak of shadowy material over its stout body. The beady eyes set high in its long face stared at her with disdain, as if daring her to try to get past it.

"P-please, I need h-help," Sarah's voice was tiny and afraid, but she didn't know what to do. The creature continued to watch her with hate etched on its face.

"You may not leave. Go back now, and I will not rip you to shreds."

Sarah gasped again and tried to stand, but she had fallen onto her back and couldn't. She would have to turn over again, but she didn't want to take her eyes off this creature, for fear it might do something horrible to her if she wasn't watching it. There was nothing she could do. She reached behind her, feeling for a piece of the junk attached to her. She felt something small, a box, and tugged hard to pull it off her back. Once again, it felt as though the object was a part of her, and her skin came away with the box. She screamed in pain, and the dark creature before her started to laugh.

"It is not time yet," it growled, laughing harder when she started sobbing.

It was too much for her. The creature, the pain, the weight of every item attached to her body, was more than she could bear, and she began to scream. She closed her eyes and filled the air with a piercing cry of fear and pain.

Suddenly, she felt the weight attached to her disappear, and she sat up in bed with a deep gasp. A nightmare. It was only a nightmare. Even so, Sarah couldn't get back to sleep that night, and when the sun peeked over the horizon a few hours later, it found Sarah sitting at her window, watching the birds wake up and trying to get the dream off her mind.


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah dreamed of the junkyard every night from then on. In every dream, she woke up on her back, covered in junk that had become part of her body. But she realized something after a few weeks of the dream. All of the things that fell away from her were still gone when she dreamed again.

It was strange that the items attached to her didn't change in her dream. In fact it wasn't like any dream she'd ever had before. If she had been asked, she wouldn't be able to explain why, but the dream felt different**.**

That terrifying creature was always there too, always guarding the exit. She had taken to trying to find different ways out, but no matter what exit she found, the creature blocked her way. She thought it was the same creature, at least. It looked the same, and it always said the same thing.

"You may not leave."

The thing never became less terrifying either.

In her dreams, she discovered that she could explore the vast land of junk as much as she wanted, as long as she didn't try to leave. She didn't much at first; all the stuff was too heavy for her to bear very far without having to rest. But as the weeks went by, and the junk slowly fell away, she found she could move much easier. By the end of the second month of this dream, there was only one layer of junk attached to her, and she could move with relative ease.

She never saw another person or living creature other than the monster who held her prisoner in this place. And she soon realized that every single piece of tattered and dirty junk strewn about was something she had once either owned or coveted; everything from the Raggedy Anne doll she had when she was little to the first note she had written to a friend in school.

The dark dream took its toll on her in her waking hours. She never felt like she had gotten any rest. Her grades were slipping, and she had developed dark circles under her eyes. Karen, her stepmother, had taken her to a doctor, who prescribed sleeping pills, but nothing was working.

The dream, though it was the same thing every night, never ceased to terrify her. She'd found herself shaken awake many nights by her parents who had come running to her room when they heard her screaming in her sleep. Karen had started talking about setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist and Sarah was wondering if maybe it wasn't a bad idea. Maybe she _was_ going crazy.

She didn't understand why this was happening to her. She had won. She had solved the labyrinth, and she had won.

"You have no power over me," she'd found herself repeating the words like a prayer every night before she went to bed, but she always woke up in the junkyard as soon as she fell asleep in her bedroom.

But through it all, Sarah never lost hope. She was strong, and she knew she could overcome this. She had tried everything else and apart from resigning herself to believing she really was insane, it was time to think outside the box.

If her adventures in the labyrinth really had happened, it wasn't too much of a leap to assume that these nightmares were caused by magic. And if it was some sort of curse, maybe the way out of it was to get out of the junk yard. She would have to face that creature and find a way to escape it.

But how was Sarah going to get past the dark creature that always seemed to know where she was? She sat in her math class and tried to think of something. Would she be able to outrun the thing? She shivered just thinking about the idea of the monster catching up to her if she even got past it. And she didn't want to imagine what it might do if it did catch her.

She didn't know if the dream was really an enchantment, but she didn't want to take any chances by assuming it wasn't. It was possible if she died in her dream, she would die in real life. No, if she had learned anything from the Labyrinth, she had learned not to take anything for granted.

And she wouldn't; especially when it came to her instinct. And her instinct told her that she needed to get to the castle. Sarah didn't know why. If Jareth had done this to her, the castle would be the last place she should go. But it was drawing her to it like a moth to a flame, and she knew that everything was backward in the Labyrinth. So if the castle is the last place she should go normally, she knew she had to go there.

Sarah was thinking so much about her predicament that she didn't realize she was falling asleep, and suddenly she found herself back in the junkyard.

"Damn." She knew she was asleep-she knew she would get in trouble with her math teacher if she didn't wake up. But she couldn't. It wasn't that she couldn't bring herself to; she could just never wake up when she was dreaming of the Labyrinth until the dream allowed her to.

"Well, there's nothing to do but try." She stood up, the hoards of junk that had been attached to her skin was gone now except for a few things, and walked aimlessly for a while.

Very slowly, she began to make her way to the edge of the junkyard. She kept her eyes open for the creature that guarded the limits, but she didn't see it. Sarah finally reached the end of the junkyard and looked around. Not seeing anything or anyone around, she edged closer to the unseen border. She was going to make it! She was going to get out of…but no. The menacing creature suddenly appeared in front of her, an angry look on its face.

"You may not leave." Sarah wanted nothing more than to run back to the center of the junkyard where this monster never traversed, but she stopped herself. She stood up straight and tried to be brave, though that was the last thing she felt.

"W-why can't I leave? Let me pass." Her voice wavered at first but she felt it growing stronger with every word. The monster stepped closer to her, so close that she could feel its warm breath on her face.

"You may not leave."

She stood still and closed her eyes, silently building up the courage to do what she suddenly knew she had to do. When she opened her eyes, there was a determination in them that caught the creature off guard. Sarah took that opportunity to run. She sidestepped the monster blocking her path and ran as fast as she could toward the castle, not daring to look back to see if it was following her.

Everything seemed to go so quickly. There were no goblins in sight in the Goblin City, no chickens or cats or any other living creature for that matter. The hut-like houses that filled the goblin city loomed over her as she ran past. Everything seemed so sinister when it was empty. But she didn't have time to think about that. The castle loomed ahead of her, and only when she had made it to the top of the steps and stood at the entrance did she look behind her. There was no one. The creature that guarded the junkyard had not followed her. Sarah took a moment to catch her breath and compose herself before heaving open the large doors to the castle and walking inside.

She only hoped the castle wouldn't be completely abandoned as well.


End file.
